2019 – Posted in: Daily News

Controlled Human Infection Model (CHIM)

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Topics covered: About Controlled Human Infection Model

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The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) is close to finalising three projects, involving Indian and European scientists, to develop new influenza vaccines.

Controlled Human Infection Model

Under CHIM, volunteers who take part in trials will be infected, under expert supervision, with infectious viruses or bacteria to learn more about the infection or to develop vaccines for it.

The objective of the study

Researchers have proposed Clinical Human Infection Model (CHIM) studies to study how the pathogen transmits this disease, how the disease progresses, how an individual body responds to it and how an effective treatment can be formulated to encounter this disease.

Highlights

Rotavirus vaccine was tested in other countries where it showed 90 percent efficacy while in India it has only 50 per cent efficacy.
There are oral vaccinations like for cholera, polio that was tested elsewhere and showed good results but showed low efficacy in India.

Concern

The risk in such trials is that intentionally infecting healthy people with an active virus and causing them to be sick is against medical ethics. It also involves putting human lives in danger.

Advantages

A CHIM approach will speed up the process whereby scientists can quantify whether potential vaccine candidates can be effective in people and identify the factors that determine why some vaccinated people fall sick and others do not.

Why this study has importance?

India has a significant burden of typhoid especially among young children.Typhoid strains can only be present in humans and cannot be artificially developed or cultured in labs.
CHIM is a faster way to develop a vaccine as it is studied well in human models.

Source: The Hindu

Controlled Human Infection Model – Department of Biotechnology 25/09/2019 – Posted in: Daily News

Controlled Human Infection Model (CHIM)

News Flash